


take me out, and take me home

by toastyhyun



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Semi-Slow Burn, Temporarily Unrequited Love, lapslock, richie thinks about eddie and pines a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastyhyun/pseuds/toastyhyun
Summary: loving eddie comes as naturally as breathing. richie sits there and just listens to the timbre of his voice, letting it settle in his chest, keeping him warm. he looks at the lines of eddie’s face, the wrinkles and crevices and smile lines and creases, and wonders how anyone could ever look at him and not fall in love.richie thinks he’d love eddie in any life he lived. he doesn’t know if he could stop even if he tried, and he finds more and more with every passing day that he doesn’t ever want to. it makes being just friends a bit hard, but he’d rather have this long distance friendship than nothing at all.





	take me out, and take me home

**Author's Note:**

> i was possessed by a spirit and wrote 1/4 of this on my phone in an hour before falling asleep, and then woke up and wrote the rest in a frenzy. this is my first time in a (very) long time writing any fic but kfic, and i'm still not sure i got the characterizations down properly, but oh well. here it is. unbetaed.
> 
> warnings for mentions of anxiety/ptsd. follows a mix of movie/book canon. title from taylor swift's _lover_.

richie tozier is pretty sure he's allowed to say he's been through hell at this point. dealing with a murderous, terror-inspiring, self-proclaimed _eater of worlds_ masquerading as a creepy fucking clown -- not just once as a child, but again as an adult -- probably qualifies him to be able to say he's been through the ringer. he's felt fear so bone-deep it chilled him, froze him to the spot and skipped heartbeats, and yet he'd come back from it and survived, both times.

still, though, it doesn't compare to the full blown panic that had come when he'd thought that eddie was dead.

crouched down in that sewer, in the lowlight of whatever other-dimension they'd found underneath It's house on neibolt street, richie had found himself at a loss for words for perhaps the first time in his forty years on earth in the face of losing maybe the only person he'd ever actually loved. he'd looked at eddie, propped up against the wall, shirt soaked through with blood and skin pale, waxy, and he'd barely been able to breathe with the horror that had curled around his lungs and squeezed them.

he'd pleaded, begged the others for what felt like _hours_ but must have been minutes at most. eddie wasn't dead. he _couldn't_ be dead, and they needed to get him help. he hadn't even realized he was crying until he tore his eyes away from eddie's face and found his friends were blurry in his vision, his eyes welled with tears.

they'd gotten him to the surface, though. he could hear bill and mike coming up with a plan as they did, but was unable to take his eyes off of where eddie lay, limp and lifeless in ben's arms, thinking that even with It dead, if eddie was gone then maybe that was worse than the hell they'd just been through.

the cover story they'd come up with was that bowers had done it. the hospital had gotten eddie in a stable enough condition for enough time to ask him if any of the losers' had hurt him, and who had stabbed him. he'd thankfully been lucid enough to confirm their story. an escapee from a criminal mental hospital was an easy fallback to explain it all away.

neither richie nor any of the others have been allowed to see him yet. the nurses say that visitor's rights within the first few days should be family only. bill had tried to explain that they are family, that eddie would want them there. it didn't work. they had to wait until he woke up.

richie sits on the most uncomfortable chair that's ever been created in the waiting area of the hospital, more quiet than he's ever been, and just thinks. he can tell his silence is worrying his friends -- bev makes an effort to try and start conversation with him more than once, but he's too distracted to keep up any talk.

eddie nearly died. he'd nearly lost him, forever. richie can't stop turning the thought over in his head. not even a week ago he hadn't even remembered eddie existed, and now it feels like losing him would be devastating enough to nearly kill him.

he knows why. he's known for years. he thinks of the kissing bridge, and of carving into it when he was a kid. he thinks of bowers, and victor, and belch, and hocksetter. he thinks of the way they had called him a queer, a fag, how bathroom stalls almost always had his name scrawled across them with a price listed underneath for how much he gave blowies for. he thinks about pennywise, and how It knowing scared him enough to make him want to vomit. 

he thinks of how even in the face of that, he hadn't been able to bring himself to stop loving his best friend.

he loved all of them, of course. ben and bev and stan and mike and especially bill, big bill, who he looked up to and admired and valued almost more than any of them. he'd been willing to do anything for them, when they were kids. he still would.

yet still, it'd always been different with eddie. he'd teased and prodded and played with the others, aiming for good chucks and good fun and to make them laugh. but he'd always gravitated, hadn't he?

hadn't he always made it a point to touch eddie whenever he could, without even realizing he was doing it? pinching his cheeks, calling him cute, tucking an arm over his shoulder, crawling into the hammock in the clubhouse with him? wasn't it obvious? wasn't it pitiful?

even as an adult, meeting everyone all over again and falling back into their childhood routines. who else could match him so well, beat for beat, snip for snip? had he ever felt that way with anyone else?

he thinks of how eddie had revealed he was married. he remembers the twist in his stomach, how he'd asked if it was to a woman before really even registering why he even _cared_. does he love her? does she make him laugh, like richie does? does she have a nickname for him, like richie does? does he like it when she calls him cute?

he knows, sitting in that rock-hard hospital chair at thirty-nine, just as he'd known when he'd crouched down to carve into the bridge at twelve, that he's in love with eddie. the only difference is that now he has a taste of what it'd be like to lose him, and he's not sure if he can cope with that, if he can go on without letting someone know. (without letting eddie know?)

he doesn't decide to do it. it just sort of happens.

eventually the nurses relent and let the five of them into the room. richie catches his first glimpse of eddie and it's like the bottom of his stomach just drops out. he looks-- well, he doesn't look the best he ever has, still pale and sickly and hooked up to god knows how many IVs and looking tiny in his hospital bed, bandages across his torso and on his cheek, but he's alive, and he's breathing, and he's smiling.

bev starts crying when she hugs him, and that makes ben tear up, and then bill, and then they're all crying and hugging and laughing and breathless with the thrill of having made it out. richie takes a seat right at eddie's bedside and takes his hand without even thinking about it. no one seems to notice.

the energy starts to fade away after an hour or so when bev droops against ben's shoulder. he quietly excuses the two of them to take her back to a hotel to sleep. bill leaves soon after, saying he needs to get a hold of audra to let her know what’s going on, and mike tags along and cites having to clean up the library, to talk to the police, to write down what happened in case they all forget once more. 

that leaves richie, who has barely spoken, who can't take his eyes off eddie's face.

"what's wrong with you?" eddie looks at him, and there's a silly little smile just at the corners of his eyes, and it fills richie's lungs up so full he feels like he might burst, holding his breath as if trying to keep all that feeling from escaping. "did yelling at the clown bust your vocal chords? i don't think i've ever heard you this quiet."

"eds," says richie. his voice sounds far away.

"don't call me that," says eddie, like it's reflexive, and that crinkled eyesmile doesn't go anywhere, so richie knows he doesn't mean it. he feels like he might cry.

"i love you," whispers richie, swallowing around the thick lump that's formed in his throat.

"i love you too, man," whispers eddie right back, humour coating the underside of his voice.

"eddie." richie can hear his voice crack around his name, and almost grimaces before he spits it out. "i'm not-- i don't mean it like that. i'm in fucking love with you, dude."

eddie pauses. the silence feels like it stretches on for an eternity.

"beep beep, richie," says eddie after much too long, and now he's frowning, and oh god, richie has to look away from him and to the floor.

"what," breathes richie. his heart pounds against his ribcage, brittle and splintering and about to burst.

"don't joke about that shit," says eddie. 

"i'm not joking. i've loved you-- i think i've been in love with you since we were kids. when-- when we were twelve and i couldn't stop thinking about how cute you are. i carved your fucking name into the kissing bridge, dude. i think that's the tweenage version of a marriage proposal."

the words spill out of him almost involuntarily, and like dominoes, once he starts he can't stop. "i used to take shit from bowers and the rest of them and just think, wow, shit, if these guys knew i actually _was_ a queer-baby-bitch they’d probably be even worse. i used to want to wish i didn't love you but i never could bring myself to wish for it because you made me so happy. i'd look at you and be like, fuck, i guess neuroticism is the same as eroticism in my books, and seeing an inhaler or a fanny pack would give me a fuckin’ hard-on. nobody ever really got me like you did. i used to dream about the best ways to make you laugh. the scent of menthol used to give me butterflies, like i was a fucking teenage girl in a shitty young adult romance novel, and--"

"richie." he clams up almost immediately. when he glances up and meets eddie's gaze, he hates how unfamiliar it is. there's apprehension there, and something reserved, and what he thinks might be pity. he thinks it’d be better if eddie was just flat-out mad at him.

"eds," says richie, and hates how pathetic he sounds.

"i'm… i'm married," says eddie, eyes flickering down to where their hands tuck together until he pulls his away. it's only now that richie sees the band on his finger and the reminder slams into him, full force. "i'm sorry."

it sort of feels like being torn apart from the inside out. a fiery, harsh dryness climbs his throat and something cold slides into his chest like a knife through the ribs. his eyes burn but he somehow manages not to cry, huffing out a couple insincere chucks and folding his arms over his stomach where it churns.

"it's okay," he says. (it's not.) "i only wanted to let you know. haha. you know. just in case. we’re still friends, if, um, only if you want to be. i’d like to be.” his words come out quick again, just on the edge of hysteria.

he stands, clumsily, knocking the chair he's in backwards with the force with which he gets up. "i, uh. actually have to go. my manager is probably losing his fucking mind trying to figure out where i am. haha."

"richie--" eddie sounds like he's about to apologize. for a split second, richie is terrified eddie's going to try and explain _why_ he doesn't love him back, and try to justify it, and he thinks he'd rather go back into the sewers than listen to that, so he cuts him off before he can continue.

"i'll see you around, eddie spaghetti," he says, falsely cheerful, and escapes out the door pretending like he doesn't hear eddie calling after him.

\---

is hell losing the person you love, or pushing them away?

richie’s not sure. it’s been… two weeks, he thinks, since he’d left derry. the events of being there are burned into his mind like photographs, the things he’d seen being back there and in that hell-cave, and yet everything after is fuzzy round the edges. 

he remembers finding bill outside the hospital room, feeling himself on the edge of both tears and vomit and feeling like a lovesick teenager all over again, and hiding those feelings in bill’s shoulder when he’d hugged him and said goodbye. they traded numbers, and he found ben and bev and traded numbers with them too, saying his goodbyes to both the two of them and mike as well before calling his manager.

he’s on a plane back home the next day, and does his best not to feel like he’s running away. it only just barely works. he distracts himself by going back to writing -- it’s been years, now, since he’s written any material for himself. he’s rusty, but it comes at first in a trickle and then in an easy stream, like whatever blockage had been there preventing him before is gone.

adjusting to life back home is weird. he worries, however briefly, that he might forget everything all over again. two more weeks pass and that doesn’t happen. he’s written a whole show and has nothing left to distract him from… well, from eddie.

bev’s made a groupchat for them, citing wanting to know what everyone is doing. mike’s taken a vacation to florida. bill’s returned to work on writing a new novel, confident the ending will please readers this time. bev’s filed for divorce with her husband, and is staying with ben in the meantime. richie’s told them about his new show, his plans to make a better comeback. 

eddie has barely updated. he’s home now. richie knows that. he’s able to walk and work without upsetting his injuries. richie wonders if his wife is taking care of him. he wonders if eddie’s told her about what happened -- all of it. the whole truth. he wonders if she believes him. he wonders if eddie has nightmares about It, like richie does, and if his wife is able to come even _close_ to understanding. richie tries his best not to think about it, but still can’t stop wondering. he turns over what ifs in his head and wonders and hates himself for it.

he wonders, only when he allows himself to, whether eddie thinks about him even a fraction of the time richie thinks about him. 

he wonders if eddie wonders too. what if? 

\---

> **@trashmouthtozier** think i’m bi lol  
|  
**@trashmouthtozier** jk!  
|  
**@trashmouthtozier** i’m actually gay

\---

being a _gay icon_ or a _bussy buster_ or a _lesbian ally_ \-- or _whatever_ the kids are calling him these days -- is... a little nerve-wracking, richie’s not going to lie. he’d gone from the average middle-aged american’s comedian, reciting someone else’s material, to playing shows for crowds of gay kids, with jokes that he’s actually put the time into. he knows he’s lucky it’s working out well. he signs a deal for a netflix special and feels like maybe everything’s not falling apart.

the losers congratulate him. he hadn’t told them, before tweeting, but he does link the tweet into the chat after he’s posted it because he wants them to know. his stomach twists and turns like a bowl of snakes, that same nervous-nausea that had arisen in that hospital room with eddie coming back, but it’s for naught.

everyone is chill with it. it’s not a big deal. bev says she’d always been suspicious when they were kids. mike laughs and asks whether he was supposed to pretend like he hadn’t already known. ben says he’d figured it out when richie had stared at his body far too long at the restaurant back in derry. bill jokes he’d thought that richie’d been crushing on him when they were kids. richie laughs a little too hard at that one.

eddie doesn’t say anything.

\---

time keeps passing.

richie sort of feels like he’s drifting through the motions of his life. he does his shows, he does interviews, he tweets good chucks, and he still talks far too much. on the surface, everything is fine. he’s doing well. yet he goes home and something feels wrong. his apartment feels empty, and for a week he fills it with clutter to try and combat that, but it doesn’t do anything but make him feel worse and he soon throws almost all of it out.

he’s in the middle of scrolling through the aspca website, considering getting a pet to keep him company, when he gets a notification in the groupchat and nearly drops his phone.

> 11:27pm **eds**: My divorce went through

richie stares at the message, feeling blank all the way through.

> 11:28pm **bev**: Oh sweetie thats great!!!!  
11:30pm **big bill**: Good wishes from Audra and I, Eddie.  
11:31pm **big bill**: Hope this makes you happier  
11:31pm **bev**: Ben and I are so happy for you :)  
11:32pm **eds**: thanks guys  
11:32pm **eds**: means a lot, you don’t even know

richie stares, and then puts his phone down on the couch beside him, and stares instead at the wall. he can feel his phone buzz again, no doubt mike’s support coming through. richie should say something too, but he feels like he’s in shock.

he hadn’t even _known_ eddie had filed for divorce. he hadn’t even known he’d been thinking about it. had he only told the rest of them in private? had he deliberately not let richie know? why had he divorced her? when had he decided to? why hadn’t he told richie?

his hands move faster than his brain does and he sends a message, not through the groupchat but instead in a private message with eddie. the thread is blank.

> 11:40pm **Me:** eds?

eddie doesn’t reply that night.

richie wakes up to a wet pillow, face swollen, and for the first time truly wishes he didn’t love eddie, if only so that it didn't hurt so much when eddie never responds.

\---

ben and bev get married.

she asks richie to be her maid of honour. he’s only saved from having to wear a bridesmaid dress by having accidentally given her wrong measurements and not fitting into it the day of. it’s luck that he’d brought along a tux with him. ben asks bill to be his best man. eddie stands on bill’s side of the altar, and richie can’t take his eyes off of him.

divorce has done him well. richie has dreamt of eddie more times than he can count, and he still looks more beautiful than he’s ever able to remember. he’s still small, and a bit gangly, and by all rights richie shouldn’t find him as attractive as he does when his tie is crooked and his shirt doesn't fit, coming untucked when he raises his hands higher than his chest, but he goes breathless anyways.

the service is beautiful. richie barely watches it. he stares at the scar on eddie’s cheek, a thin, craggly white line, puckered only slightly. he wonders if he has scars across his ribs where It had gotten him too, if they had healed better or worse than the one on his face. 

later, sitting down at the same table as the rest of the losers’ sans bev and ben as they have their first dance, richie glances over at eddie. he thinks of him in that cave again, soaked through with blood and weak, so weak, and starts to breathe so fast he needs to excuse himself. he stumbles over his own chair in his rush to get outside, crouching down outside the chapel and pressing his face to his knees, breath coming out in little short wheezes.

“dude, you okay?” he hadn’t heard the door open behind him, but apparently someone has followed him, and he doesn’t need to look up to recognize that voice.

“doing fuckin’ great,” says richie in between little gulps of breath. his hands start to shake so he folds them together over his shins. he lifts his head and puts on the strongest grin he’s got, nudging his glasses up properly onto his nose with a twitch of his shoulder. “got your puffer? could really use one right now.”

“shut up,” huffs eddie. he sits down against the wall next to richie, looking to hesitate a moment before he puts a hand on his shoulder. “you haven’t fucking developed asthma in the last fifteen minutes. just breathe.”

eddie’s hand on his shoulder both calms richie and makes him want to go fucking ballistic. his body vibrates with the contrast of the two feelings, and he hiccups over a breath, and then another, “do you-- do you think i’m not trying to fuckin’ breathe, eds? it’s not really-- working.”

“don’t call me that,” and god, eddie almost sounds fond when he says that. richie feels like he’s going to suffocate under the weight of what having eddie beside him feels like. “take deep breaths, rich. here.”

he reaches and nudges richie’s knees til they’re away from his stomach, and takes one of his hands and places it right on the swell of his own stomach. he then imitates the same pose himself. “breathe in as far as you can and feel your tummy rise, hold it, and then let it all go and count to three before doing it again.”

richie tries. he really does. he’s all too conscious of eddie’s thumb sweeping idly against his back, but in a way it sort of grounds him, knowing that eddie is there and with him and alive and not dead and stuck in a cave and covered in blood. he stutters over the first few breaths and expects eddie to tell him he’s doing it wrong, but the lecture never comes. instead eddie encourages him with a soft voice richie doesn’t know if he’s ever heard before, and breathes with him, and minutes later he’s doing it properly and his heart isn’t going so fast and his head feels much clearer.

he drops his hand from his stomach to the ground, the gravel gritty under his fingertips in a way that’s comforting. “thanks, eduardo,” he mumbles, all of a sudden exhausted all the way down to his toes. “neat trick. where’d you learn to do that?”

eddie presses his mouth into a line, before speaking haltingly. “turns out my asthma was bullshit. just misdiagnosed anxiety perpetuated by my mom and then me once she died.” he pauses. “and then my wife.”

“perpetuated,” repeats richie, unable to help himself. “that’s a pretty big word, eds, don’t hurt yourself.”

“shut the fuck up.” eddie snorts and lets himself fall back to lean against the wall of the chapel. his hand falls away from richie’s back and he pretends not to be disappointed. “i’m opening up, you dickhead.”

“sorry,” says richie, and then a silence falls between them. it reminds him of the kind they used to share, back when richie would convince mrs kaspbrak to let him stay the night and they’d share eddie’s bed, knee to knee, elbow to elbow, facing each other in the dark. neither sleeping but neither saying anything. just in each other’s presence. richie used to enjoy those quiet moments almost as much as he enjoyed their playfighting.

he thinks of the last silence they’d shared, and why, and the content feeling that had blanketed him sours and turns cold. that same feeling returns, the knife-through-the-ribs sharpness.

“why didn’t you tell me about the divorce?” richie hears himself ask. his throat feels clogged.

eddie looks at him, brows furrowed, and counters, “why didn’t you ever tell us you were gay?”

the knife glows red-hot-irritated-angry, and richie sits up a little. “that’s not fucking fair, eddie, you know that. you _know_ why. that’s not the same thing.” 

“maybe it is,” grumbles eddie, and he folds his arms over his chest. the silence stretches thin between them now, taut, tense enough that richie is afraid to touch it lest it snap back and burn him.

“my mom abused me,” says eddie. “not physically. emotionally. i-- after derry, after dealing with It again, and getting all those memories back, i… i really had to face it, you know? i think i even knew when i was a kid, what she was doing to me. she just wanted to fucking control me, and she used the medication and the illnesses and the bullshit placebos to do it. myra was doing the same shit, and i was letting her. i married my fucking mom, dude. genuinely.”

“you took my sloppy seconds,” says richie, even though he knows it’s bad timing. eddie glares at him and he lifts both hands in loose defence. “sorry. sort of. listen, man. i mean, i know it must have been a big journey for you, and all, but i mean… we all knew, too. when we were kids. we knew that she was shit to you. it was as obvious as it was that ben was in love with bev, and as obvious as it apparently was that i was gay.”

he stops, and stares down at where his hands curl over the tops of his knees. they look as old as he feels, spotty and wrinkly and weathered. he corrects, quieter, “am gay, i mean.”

“yeah, well,” says eddie, and freezes in place, unnaturally still a few moments before he grinds out, tense all over, “me too.”

richie feels like he’s been doing a lot of staring lately, but does it again. he feels like he must have heard eddie wrong. he takes off his glasses, knuckles the corners of his eyes before he puts them back on and blinks, “huh?”

“i’m gay, rich,” says eddie. he stares down at his hands, open-faced and palms-up where they sit on his thighs.

“you’re gay,” repeats richie, the words thick on his tongue. “and that’s why you got a divorce?”

“i mean, it’s part of it,” says eddie, sounding uncomfortable. “the gaslighting and the abuse and the whole trying to start a new chapter of my life was a big fuckin’ part too.”

“why didn’t you tell me?” asks richie, and now his chest hurts. technically the first person richie had ever come out to was eddie, telling him he loved him in that stupid fucking hospital room, and then he’d come out again and turned his career around because of it. why had eddie told everyone _but_ him, when he was likely the one to understand the best?

“rich…” eddie has that look on his face again, the painful-pitiful one that makes richie want to hurl. he thinks if he sits here, outside with the love of his life and knowing that they didn’t trust him because of that love, he might just blow chunks everywhere.

“we should probably get back inside,” says richie instead of replying. when he gets to his feet, his legs feel shaky underneath him. “bev’ll want a dance with me.”

“who could resist?” jokes eddie, but it falls horrifically flat. richie can’t look at him. 

he turns to escape inside as quickly as he can after plastering on a smile, but eddie catches him by the wrist to keep him from running away, this time. richie turns to him, hoping his face doesn’t show how distraught he feels.

“rich,” sighs eddie. he looks pinched, like he’s about to say something he’s going to have a hard time with, and richie wishes he could rip his arm away and run. “i’ve missed you. honest. i’m sorry for not telling you, i was just… i dunno, man. i was scared, i guess. didn’t want to hurt you. i want us to be friends again. i really do. can we try that?”

richie looks at eddie, and how he looks like he’s trying not be hopeful, and feels something break in him. he thinks this is where he’ll resign to never having eddie, not in the way he’s wanted since he was twelve. eddie’s right there, within reach, single and gay and as lovely as he’s ever been, and at the same time he’s miles away. maybe he can’t have him the way he wants, but maybe they can go back to the way they’d been.

“okay,” whispers richie. “friends, then.”

“friends,” whispers eddie back, and smiles like the sun.

\---

friends means richie has to write out the jokes he’d been going to make in his next show about being in love with a germaphobic manic twink, because he thinks it’d probably make eddie uncomfortable if he ever heard them. it means their texts start out stilted, and not regular, but over time grow more and more frequent until they happen every day.

it means that while his apartment does still feel empty, his life fills out a little more. he feels less lonely. having eddie not ignoring him in the groupchat makes him feel better about being much more active, and he thinks while everyone gripes about his walls of text being annoying, they might secretly be a little relieved.

eddie tells him that he’s seeing a shrink. when richie tells him about how he feels about walking his life in someone else’s shoes and just going through the motions, he recommends richie to see someone too.

the doctor he goes to tells him he might have comorbid depression and ptsd. richie believes it. he goes to a therapist biweekly who helps him in dealing with it, teaches him exercises like the one eddie had used to come down from the flashbacks and gets him on an antidepressant that helps getting out of bed and through his days a little easier. eddie tells him he's proud of him, and richie feels like he's walking on the moon for days afterwards.

somewhere along the line, daily texting turns into calling. one night, after a particularly bad nightmare where the It-spider had chased him and his friends through what felt like an endless maze, picking them off one by one, richie only dodging It at the last second when it went to spear him and It getting eddie instead, killing him instantly like everyone else, richie doesn’t even think before he dials eddie’s number. he picks up on the third ring.

“th’ fuck, dude? it’s like 3am.” eddie sounds groggy, just-awake, voice still syrupy with sleep.

richie chokes out a little half-sob, muffled into his sheets, eyes squeezing shut, relief that eddie’s alive and leftover panic leaving him gasping for air. “eds, i-- _eddie_.”

“woah,” says eddie, and his voice gets a little quiet. there’s a rustling, like he’s sitting up in bed. “rich, is everything ok?”

“you died,” heaves out richie, clutching at the fabric of his sleepshirt. the vivid image of eddie speared sticks in his mind like glue behind his eyelids, and images of all his friends dying flicker through his mind like a flipbook when he opens them and blinks away tears.

“i’m not dead,” says eddie, and now he starts to murmur. that same comforting voice he’d used at the wedding comes forth again, grainy through the tinny speaker of his phone but soothing nonetheless. “i’m alive. you can hear me, right? i’m not dead. It didn’t get me, i made it out. remember?”

“i remember,” whispers richie, shaking.

“we killed It. in the sewers. we put It in Its place and It’s not coming back now. It can’t hurt us anymore. bill lived, bev lived, mike lived, ben lived, i lived, and so did you. we made it out. besides,” eddie pauses here, “who fucked your mom last night if i’m dead?”

that startles a watery laugh out of richie, bubbling up and popping in his chest, easing and loosening the anxiety that had wound him tight in knots there. “you’re right,” says richie. “you’re alive.”

“damn fucking rights i’m alive,” says eddie. richie thinks he can hear a smile in his voice. “so are you.”

“sorry for… waking you,” says richie, who’s rolled onto his back and placed a hand on his stomach. exhaustion washes over him again, the same way it always does after one of these attacks, and he breathes in the same way eddie had taught him, eyes drifting shut.

“it’s okay,” says eddie, and richie believes him.

so they’re friends. 

it hurts, sometimes. like when richie’s in an interview and they, inevitably, start asking him about his sexuality and he has to carefully tiptoe around the subject of eddie. they ask him how he knew he was gay, who his first crush was, whether or not he’s looking to date now, if he has any flames he’s seeing now. all the answers lead back to eddie.

men have asked him out. he thought at forty, single, gay, maybe-almost-starting to bald, and without a magnificently chris evans-chris hemsworth-superhero-sculpted body, his dating pool might’ve prematurely dried up before he even took a dive in. he does get askers, though.

he flirts, and it’s fun, and it sort of feels like the adolescent experience he never got, but when it comes to actually going out with any of them, he can’t bring himself to say yes. he goes home and he calls eddie and they talk shit about eddie’s clients and gossip about their friends and richie so desperately wants him that it starts to hurt him physically. eddie laughs and richie’s heart twangs a sad note, like he’s pavlov’s dog and eddie’s little wheezy giggling triggers mini heartattacks.

he knows, somewhere deep inside, how tragically cliche this is. pining after his childhood best friend well into his late thirties? if it wasn’t him in the situation, he’d be laughing. because it is him, he decides to indulge in the cliche. he can be dramatic if he wants to.

he lounges across his couch some nights and yells at alexa to play one of the many angsty spotify playlists he’s curated, and just sits there and thinks and daydreams and imagines what he and eddie could be, if only, and often cries. it’s almost cathartic. 

he knows it’s probably not at all helping him in getting over eddie, or moving on, and neither is talking to him every chance he can, but he’s not sure if he ever wants to move on. he tells his therapist that, once, and she frowns at him in that disappointed way she does whenever he says something that displeases her. he doesn’t care.

loving eddie comes as naturally as breathing. eddie goes on a rant about something -- usually something richie’s said -- and richie sits there and just listens to the timbre of his voice, letting it settle in his chest, keep him warm. on the rare times they facetime, richie looks at the lines of eddie’s face, the wrinkles and crevices and smile lines and creases, and wonders how anyone could ever look at him and not fall in love. 

richie thinks he’d love eddie in any life he lived. he doesn’t know if he could stop even if he tried, and he finds more and more with every passing day that he doesn’t ever want to. it makes being just friends a bit hard, but he’d rather have this long distance friendship than nothing at all.

\---

until… well.

“excuse me? let me clean out my ears, clearly they’re full of wax, you’re _what_?”

“i’m moving to LA,” says eddie, like that’s not a huge fucking deal. “i’m expanding the limo business and it’s a really profitable place to set up.”

“and you can’t afford an apartment even though you own your own fuckin’ company?” richie is in absolute disbelief. “did you blow all your money at the pharmacy or something? do i need to book you an emergency appointment with dr. you-aren’t-actually-ill-your-mom-just-abused-you?”

“beep beep, richie,” sighs eddie, sounding exasperated. “you’ve got an extra room. let me stay. at least until i get a good footing in. i don’t want to sign a lease if this whole thing is going to fall through.”

“i…” richie, shakes his head, laughs a little, glancing around his apartment and all the things he knows are going to frustrate eddie to all ends and grinning. “yeah, sure, ok. come right on over, spaghetti head.”

\---

so, eddie moves in. at first richie feels a little like he might die, getting up in the morning and seeing eddie already up, sleepy-eyed and in pyjamas and slippers, cooking the both of them breakfast, heart pounding so hard against his ribcage it feels like it’ll break through and jump to the kitchen floor. he doesn’t die there, though, catching his breath again and asking if eddie plans to burn his whole kitchen down or just the toast, laughing when eddie starts to snap back at him.

it’s painful in a domestically blissful sort of way. 

every few weeks, usually after richie's left town for work or just been out long enough to leave eddie to his own devices, he comes home and the entire layout of the apartment has changed. the living room furniture has been rearranged, or the layout of the forks and knives in his drawers has been switched, or all the paintings on the wall are in different places. he's learned not to ask. he'd never admit it to eddie, but the constant variety is sort of fun.

eddie comes home from work, undoing his tie as he steps over the threshold and dropping his things as he makes his way through the living room and through the kitchen, clapping a hand against richie’s shoulder where he sits on the couch as he passes him and mumbling a hello. richie thinks that in another world, this would be the part of the day where eddie kissed his cheek, where richie could ask about his day and they’d sit together and richie could rub his feet and maybe they’d share kisses between stories.

as it is, they do most of their talking over the dinner table. they fall into a routine of almost always eating dinner together, save for when richie’s in another city for a set or eddie’s work runs late, and even then they usually talk on the phone or richie will meet eddie at a restaurant to eat. it's like an unspoken rule of the house.

fridays, when richie is in town, become movie nights. it starts, again, as an unspoken thing. he's not sure how, but he's almost subconsciously begun to keep his friday evening schedules clear, as each friday night when he comes home late, eddie's pulled up some new shitty flick on netflix he wants to watch and refuses to let richie sit out of. it's fun. they sit and make fun of bad horror tropes and chick flicks and dumb action movie cgi.

there’s also the late nights, where It comes back in spirit to haunt them, Its presence seeping through and into their dreams. there’s usually some shouting -- richie hadn’t known his nightmares had made him thrash about, but eddie’s told him it’s usually a struggle to wake him without getting pelted by one of his fists. eddie screams in his sleep and richie has to shake him almost too-violently to pry him from the clutches of his sleep.

they often don’t talk about the nightmares. they simply get up, eddie puts on the kettle to make tea, and they sit across the dinner table with each other and either make small talk or don’t speak at all. it’s comfortable. it’s comforting. richie would never be averse to spending time with eddie and could never let him suffer alone, and eddie has never complained about being tired the next day when he stays up with richie. it works.

(after a particularly bad night, where richie had to hold eddie’s hand and stroke his hair for fifteen minutes straight before eddie was collected enough to get out of bed, richie wonders if eddie’s wife could ever have done this for him. he doesn’t think so. he thinks briefly whether or not whoever eddie decides to marry in the future will be able to, and it hurts to think about, but he hopes whoever it is doesn’t think twice about it.)

so they have their routines. that’s normal to have with your roommate-you’re-stupidly-in-love-with-who-doesn’t-love-you-back, right?

maybe not.

richie isn’t complaining, though. he’ll take whatever he can get.

when the four month mark of living together rolls around, richie has the brilliant idea to invite all their friends over. he manages to convince bill and audra to fly in from england, and everyone else follows suit. watching eddie drive himself into hysterics over cleaning and recleaning and re-recleaning the apartment over and over again is a hundred percent worth all the cabinet rearranging he’s forced to do.

seeing everyone again is great. meeting audra, richie quietly thinks to himself that while she may look like bev, her personality matches bill’s much better. he’s delighted to see mike, who looks eons healthier now that he’s spent time away from derry. bev is glowing, and ben is as hot as he was the last time richie had seen him.

“keep your eyes off,” teases bev when she catches him staring at her husband, elbowing him with a grin. richie laughs, unable to keep from returning her smile.

“it’s not my fault you married a hunk-a-hunkalicious specimen. haystack’s filled out just _gorgeously_, i could just eat him up,” he says, putting on a vaguely-effeminate-Voice as he does, deliberately dragging his eyes up and down ben’s body and wiggling his eyebrows. he laughs when bev shoves him again, ben rolling his eyes and chuckling along.

“richie!” eddie’s voice floats in from the kitchen. the sound of pots and pans clanging together follows. “stop ogling ben and help me with dinner, you lazy fuck!”

richie grimaces, glancing at the two of them. “help?”

“we’re good,” says bev, taking ben’s hand as he takes steps towards the living room where mike, bill, and audra are, her eyes twinkling mischievously. “it’s not our fault you married an awful cook.”

“haha,” says richie, weakly. even the _just kidding!_ bev tosses over her shoulder as she leaves doesn’t stop his stomach from twisting at the thought.

he gets dinner made, only after shooing eddie from the kitchen, lest he fuck up the pasta dish richie’s making by burning the water or something. various losers float in and out of the kitchen to keep him company, eddie wandering in ever so often to try and help before richie manages to shout him out for good.

“this is really good, rich.” mike sounds surprised after he’s taken a bite when they’re finally sat at the table, which is a little hurtful, but richie will take the compliment. he opens his mouth to accept it, but--

“i helped,” says eddie stubbornly from the other side of the table. everyone turns to stare at him. “what! i did.”

“eds,” says richie, exasperatedly fond, thinking to himself about how cute the huffy way his shoulders bunch when he’s cornered is.

“don’t call me that, richie,” grumbles eddie, and richie smiles so wide it feels like his face might split in two.

“so i’m guessing you do the cooking and eddie does the cleaning?” bill asks, before reaching to take a sip of the wine eddie had insisted paired well with what they’re eating.

“i clean,” says richie, indignant, at exactly the same that eddie chimes in, “i cook!”

they look at each other for a beat, in which richie frowns and says, “you couldn’t fry an egg if you had a hen in the morning on a hot summer day, eds.”

“if i wasn’t around you’d forget to wipe your own ass after you took a shit, dickwad,” shoots eddie right back.

“do you two ever stop?” ben looks amused over the rim of his own wineglass as he watches the two of them bickering from either end of the table.

“nope,” says richie, proudly. 

“yes,” huffs eddie at exactly the same time. the table erupts into laughter, so contagious the two of them start to laugh along as well, unable to help it.

it feels good, the six of them together again. audra is a nice seventh, but there’s an empty chair at the table for stan that richie thinks eddie had only unconsciously set up. even without him here, richie feels full with all his friends here, eating and laughing and enjoying himself.

they split into little conversations amongst themselves, catching up and joking around. richie finds himself just as surprised as he had been the first time they’d reconnected on how easy it was, to talk to them after so long. he’s glad to have invited them all here, like this.

he looks across the table at eddie, who catches his eye while talking with bill on his left and he smiles, just a little, like it’s just for richie. _nice idea_, he seems to say. richie swells up so full he could pop.

“so when are you going to propose?” audra asks him, and the conversation dies immediately. all the mirth and lightheartedness leaves richie in a split second. she glances around at everyone where they all stare at her, and then at bill, voice a little quieter, “what’d i say?”

the knife slips in again, piercing right through his heart this time, biting and sharp and as cold as ice. his mouth dries out and he can’t lift his eyes from the tablecloth, oh-so-afraid of what eddie could look like in this moment. if he has to look at that same pity in his eyes one more time then he might actually vomit this time.

“i think maybe we should move into the living room,” says bev in a hurry, and when richie looks up at her she looks awkward and panicked, grabbing ben and mike by their shoulders and pulling. everyone follows her lead and gets up from the table, fleeing the room pretty quickly and leaving richie and eddie alone, sitting at opposite ends of their dining table.

“listen, eds,” starts richie, teeth worrying at his bottom lip so aggressively he can already feel it swelling. he’s been rejected before, is bracing himself for it when he lifts his head from the table, but stops in his tracks.

eddie’s bent over his knees, almost beneath the table, and when richie gets up to see better, he’s heaving. richie, true to form, panics, rushing over and beginning to ramble en masse.

“jesus, eds,” he says, floundering and flailing before he pulls a chair close and sits next to eddie, a hand running up his spine and then down again. “i know the thought of marrying me might make you feel nauseous, i get it, trust me, i am pretty repulsive, but if you blow chunks all over the carpet, i’m not cleaning it. you’ll have to pick bits of tomato out of the carpet and listen to me laugh at you while you gag through the whole thing. you don’t have to marry me, don’t worry. we’ll find you a big strong boy like ben who’ll clean up your tomato vomit without complaining, i promise.”

“shut the fuck up, richie,” croaks eddie, pressing his hands to his eyes, but not before richie can see them shaking. “you’re not helping.”

“okay,” says richie, and he’s definitely not panicking more, now. “okay, alright, no problem. hey, eds, eddie, eddie spaghetti, you want to lay down on the floor with me? let’s lay down on the floor, eddie, okay?”

by some miracle, eddie comes down off the chair with him and they lie there on the carpet together, eddie clasping richie’s hand so tight in his he’d be surprised if his circulation wasn’t cut off.

“my, uh, my therapist taught me this thing to do when i feel like i’m losing control and need grounding or a distraction,” says richie. he takes eddie’s hand and detangles it from his own, pressing it to the carpet below them. “she told me to draw constellations in the dots on the ceiling, see, like finding shapes in clouds? and concentrate on the feeling under my hands and really thinking about the texture there and nothing else. usually, um, usually i do it in bed so it’s my sheets, but carpet works too.”

eddie’s breath is still coming out stuttery, so richie scoots closer, lifting eddie’s hand from the carpet once more and instead dropping it palm down in his own. “you can draw the shapes you see on my hand, if that works better. or you can trace the lines of my palm, do some sick palm reading and tell me why my love line is disconnected and i’ll die alone, or whatever.”

it takes a moment, but eddie starts to draw in his palm, hesitantly at first and then more steadily as time passes. richie can hear the rest of their friends in the living room, talking in hushed voices, but in the moment he’s not listening, is wholly concentrated on getting eddie back to a good mental place.

minutes later, eddie’s stopped drawing in richie’s palm but he’s still holding on, and his breath still stutters ever so often. richie’s not sure what else he should do.

“i love you, richie,” says eddie, quietly, sounding lost.

“haha,” says richie, because he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to say. his chest squeezes. “love you too, eds.”

“don’t call me that,” whispers eddie, and when richie looks over he’s crying. “i’m in love with you, you fucker. at least call me by my name.”

“whoa,” says richie. there’s so many emotions swirling through him he can’t even begin to pick them apart. “you mean, like-- you know? like, for real?”

“yes, for real.” and now eddie’s covering his face with the hand richie doesn’t have a hold of, sniffling and shaking. “fucking dumbass.”

“eduardo,” says richie, sitting up, heart jumping into his throat. “ed-athan, ed-othy, my dearest tedward kaspbrak. you-- you’re saying. you love me? like, you’re not talking about some other dimwit named richie you know?”

“just you, trashmouth,” says eddie. “you moron.”

“why are you crying?” richie’s bewildered. he’s overwhelmed. he reaches to take eddie’s hand away from his face, finding his own shaking in the process, looking down at the only man he’s ever loved and trying to accept this beautiful, crazy, amazing person as someone who could ever possibly love him.

“well i’m too fuckin’ late, aren’t i?” says eddie, looking at richie with red-rimmed, watery eyes, face blotchy and streaked with tears and the underside of his nose shiny with what’s probably snot, hiccuping out his words between little shaky sobs and still stealing richie’s breath away. “you must’ve-- it’s been so long, since you said that you-- there must’ve been someone else, or you must’ve lost interest, especially after living with me for so long. you’ve seen all my shit habits now and there’s-- there’s no _way_ you’d want to put up with it anymore than you already have, and--”

“beep beep, eddie,” says richie, helpless. “there’s never been anybody but you.”

“oh,” says eddie, looking up at richie with wide eyes, like he’d never even considered the idea.

richie leans down, feeling as if he’s in a dream, and kisses eddie like he’s wanted to for nearly thirty years. it’s wet, eddie’s face streaked with tears, and it’s at such an awful angle, him bending over eddie’s body, but it’s perfect. eddie gasps a little beneath him, like he hadn’t been expecting it, and richie thinks he could cry.

eddie sits up on his elbows once richie draws away, not going far but just enough to get a look at him. this perfect, ridiculous, uptight, lovely man. he’s looking at richie with such an open tenderness on his face that richie almost feels like he should look away, but can’t bring himself to.

“as if i could ever get over you, eds,” whispers richie, not wanting to break the moment by speaking too loudly. “who else can i count on to change the way we put away our cutlery three times a month?”

“stop calling me that. i fucking hate you,” says eddie, seizing a hand in richie’s shirt and pulling himself up to kiss him again. richie can feel him smiling against his mouth, though, and laughs into the kiss, breathless, delirious with how happy eddie makes him, dizzy with how quickly things had happened.

“you guys done in there, or should we see ourselves out?” bill’s voice drifts in from the doorway to the living room, and then there’s footsteps, and then he’s standing above them from where they’ve tangled on the floor. “oh. so you finally sorted it out, then.”

“richie’s in love with me,” says eddie, like he’s still not quite believing it. he glances from bill, back to richie, and then back to bill again, and richie can feel the collar of his shirt shift where eddie’s grip tightens on it.

“yeah, no shit,” yells bev from the living room, sounding unimpressed. “tell us something we don’t know, eddie.”

“sorry, haystack,” calls richie. “i’ll have to steal you away from your wife in another life. i think i’ve got this one all planned out with snotbaby, over here.”

a collection of groans echo through the apartment, and bill makes a face before he waves a hand at them and exits. eddie’s clearly trying to hide a smile, lips twitching, “that was pretty fucking gross, richie.”

“yeah, well,” richie darts in and kisses eddie again, just because he can, and he’s still thrilled to have permission, “i love you too, snotbaby eds.”

**Author's Note:**

> my [twitter](http://twitter.com/toastyhyun) if you wanna talk/follow/etc. i've become reddie trash the past few weeks since chapter 2 and all my friends hate me pls send support :p
> 
> comments/kudos are always appreciated!!! thank u for reading. <3


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